Gas prices expected to boost holiday travel

Wednesday

Nov 20, 2013 at 11:14 AM

A gallon of gas in the Rochester area is 31 cents cheaper than it was a year ago, with the trend expected to continue through the holidays.

Julie Sherwood

It's going to take a little longer to make it to grandma's this Thanksgiving, but it won't cost as much as it did last year, according to analysts. With gas prices expected to be lower on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving than a year ago, traffic is projected to be heavier

that day as more people take to the roads for the Thanksgiving holiday.

A year ago on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving week, the average price for a gallon of unleaded, regular gas in the Rochester area was $3.85. This year, Nov. 20, the Wednesday before that holiday week, the average was $3.54, according to GasBuddy.com (RochesterGasPrices.com). The website showed the trend remaining stable.

Thanks largely to lower gas prices, traffic on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving — getaway day — will be up about 3 percent nationally over a year ago, according to a new analysis by INRIX, a traffic-congestion tracking firm in Washington state.

"If gas prices weren't as low as they are, things probably would have been flat compared to last year. With the low gas prices, people have more incentive to travel," state Jim Bak, INRIX's director of community relations.

This year, because of an extremely rare calendar phenomenon, Thanksgiving falls during Hanukkah, the eight-day Jewish Festival of Lights — an occurrence that last happened in 1888 and isn't projected to happen again for 79,043 years. "I think that will factor into the mix, but to what degree, I couldn't tell you," Bak says.

The airline industry trade group Airlines for America expects the number of people flying Nov. 22 through Dec. 3 to increase by 1.5 percent over last year, to 25 million passengers. That will mean more people on main routes to airports on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving; INRIX says air travelers should plan an additional 20 minutes for the trip to the airport.